LunaSol Farm blogshttp://lunasolfarm.com/blog
enFull Circle at the Solsticehttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/41
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/mp-logo.jpg" width="254" height="155" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>This is a blog post I recently wrote for Mary's Pence, a non-profit dedicated to funding grassroots women's work for justice throughout the Americas. </p>
<p>Writing about marking time and connecting to the sacred in the midst of the turning wheel of the year was made all the more poignant for me, because many years ago I ran this organization. Writing this piece was for me was a homecoming, one of those full-circle moments in time. </p>
<p>I hope that this reflection on our shared task in weaving a new collective story speaks to you as we approach the Winter Solstice, the darkest of days, the day most suited for the incubation of new life. </p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” –Annie Dillard</p>
<p>As the hours of sunlight dwindle and the year 2013 draws to an end, I find that I must complete the chores on our small farm before 4:30pm, when a darkened landscape obscures my path home. There are metal fence posts here and there, holes our dog Sirius has dug in search of moles lurking in unknown locations, and slippery surfaces to navigate on damp Oregon evenings between the field where the chickens roost and the cheery warmth of home.</p>
<p>Participating in the liturgy of nature by scooping chicken feed in the rain, in the heat of summer, in the dark cold of winter evenings, helps me to mark the passage of time in a way that I find to be strangely fulfilling, even holy. I need to be immersed in rituals, steeped in habitual life-giving patterns of thought and action, so that Sacred Presence can walk through the gray cell walls of my busy, distracted mind, and surprise me with gifts of a deeply-felt sense of connection and wholeness.</p>
<p>Some methods of keeping time work better than others for helping us to experience each day as a priceless gift, a thread with which we can continue weaving the unique creation of a lifetime. The Mary’s Pence Calendar of Women, not wholly unlike feeding a flock of chickens, provides us with a simple, yet profound way of remembering the holiness of this particular day in the turning wheel of the year. </p>
<p>By connecting the slender thread of our own lives to the lives of the women celebrated in this calendar, we can grow in awareness of our ongoing, connected efforts to weave a beautiful new story for our troubled world — a herstory. The Calendar of Women is a daily remembrance and celebration of the compassionate herstory that has often silently, but powerfully, run counter to the dominant history of poverty, violence, and injustice. </p>
<p>Theresa Maxis Duchemin. Rana Husseini. Fannie Lou Hamer. Annie Sullivan. Marjory Stoneman Douglas. These women’s names and stories grace the days of the months to come. And with each new month, another inspiring Mary’s Pence grantee is featured. </p>
<p>As you walk through the year with the women of this calendar, think also of the other people reflecting on this same calendar with you, some perhaps known, most unknown. The threads and patterns of the herstory we are weaving together will slowly become visible as we walk the spiral path through the year, 2014.</p>
<p>And as the circles of light and love expand, remember also those who make the world a more loving, fragrant, life-filled place, those whose names are certainly unknown to history, those whose importance in helping to craft a new world is often unknown even to themselves. </p>
<p>Recall also generations past who labored that we might stand on firm ground and draw breath today, and the generations yet to come, who are relying on us to weave a herstory with the stuff of our lives so that they might have fertile ground to stand upon and clean air to breathe. </p>
<p>Remember all of these, both named and unnamed in this Calendar of Women for 2014. And as you make your way home this year, through dark and cold, may your path be lighted and your heart warmed by this cloud of witnesses who labor to weave a world of beauty with you, for you, and because of you. </p>
<p>Here’s a link to order your free Mary’s Pence Calendar of Women for 2014: <a href="http://www.maryspence.org/resources.html">http://www.maryspence.org/resources.html</a> On this page is also a downloadable .pdf with the biographies of the women named in the calendar.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 20 Dec 2013 05:24:55 +0000Big Mama41 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/41#commentsYour Soul is the Whole Worldhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/40
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/mandela-prison500x.jpg" width="500" height="334" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>“Your soul is the whole world.” — Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse</p>
<p>Reclaiming your inner ground from the spin cycle of the world machine is the first act of inner liberation, the fertile ground of all true revolutions. </p>
<p>Reclaiming the soil of your soul, and reclaiming the soul of the world, begins by attending to the intersection of spirit and matter. Matter blesses us constantly with support, sustenance, shelter. But the spiritual power of this persistent and omnipresent Love cannot be noticed without attention, nor received without gratitude. </p>
<p>Only by blessing our bread, making it with our own hands or eating it with reverence, can we truly receive it as food for body and for soul. We humans, made of humus, are meant to make a heaven of earth. Our vocation is to bless matter by seeing the spirit that lies within it, to become co-creators of a holy, wholly new world by attending to the presence of the sacred within all peoples and places, all times and beings. </p>
<p>Yet our current economic system pressures us to reduce ourselves to commodities, to yield our lands to fracking, to poison our bodies and our bees with pesticides to grow vast monocrops of Roundup-ready corn. The economy calls upon us to plunder ourselves and to tear our world apart for "profit," though in so doing we lose our souls, and as we're learning, we also lose the world. </p>
<p>When we engage in a transactional relationship with matter, we lose. We have been indoctrinated into a system that denies the connection between spirit and matter in order to feed our economy. Economy means to achieve a goal with minimal or spare effort, and our economic system desperately needs out assent to operate with minimal resistance and maximum efficiency. </p>
<p>The "economy" needs us not to question the validity of placing a price tag on air, water, soil, bodies and souls. Our compliance, even more valuable than oil, is required to keep the machine operating smoothly. </p>
<p>To achieve these ends, we've been fed a steady diet of corporate media, which in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, preaches a gospel of the economy as our chief good and our shared global religion. We are called upon to appease our Consumer God’s hunger with the daily ritual sacrifice of our flesh and the living body of the world, lest we fall behind and become poor -- the leprosy of our times. </p>
<p>Whether you sit at the top or fall to the bottom in terms of material wealth in our society, make no mistake about it: you and the natural world are in mortal danger of being chewed up and spit out by the consumer economy. </p>
<p>Your soul is the whole world. By bringing the focus back to the soul, back to the soils, we stand a chance. Whatever our talents, whatever our education, whatever our finances, we were all born with ground under our feet and the rich the inner soil of the soul. </p>
<p>The world can only be transformed into sacraments of Life and Love by you, through your efforts to reclaim your soul and cultivate a life-giving relationship with the natural world. No one else can do it for you. Likewise, the world can only be made into a wasteland of violence and despair, devoid of spirit, by you. </p>
<p>You have a choice: sell out or double down? Yield your body, your attention, your time — your inner ground — to the machine of commerce and consumption? Or start stewarding your inner resources more mindfully so you can begin the long exodus out of bondage. Remember, no one but you can bless the world. Nor can anyone, but you, sell the ground out from under your feet. </p>
<p>Where you place your attention, the attitude with which you eat, the quality of your presence, the ritual actions of your daily life, these are choices full of power to help you to claim and tend your inner ground, or to abandon it through distraction and forgetfulness. The sky is not the limit. Your ground, and the combined quality of our ground, defines the limit — and the possibility — of our society and world. </p>
<p>Realizing or losing your soul is determined by the quality of your participation in the small moments of daily life — no more, no less. The perfection of Eden, ironically, isn’t the environment that’s needed to grow us as souls.</p>
<p>Learning to be authentic, being present to yourself and others, owning your shit, feeling your feelings, getting off your butt, living with as few screens between you and reality as possible, falling down, laughing and crying, and cleaning up after yourself, are all markers along the path to liberation. This is the grounded approach to reclaiming your inner resources from the spin cycle of the world machine. </p>
<p>The revolution starts and ends here: you, the ground under your feet, and the soil of your soul. As Nelson Mandela taught with the example of his own life, as go our souls, so goes the whole world.</p>
</div></div></div>Sat, 07 Dec 2013 20:13:28 +0000Big Mama40 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/40#commentsA Fiery Lovehttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/39
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/Dead_trees_in_the_Bavarian_Forest_-_Dreisesselberg_-01.JPG" width="512" height="341" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>“This situation is going to call for a lot of patience. To be patient in an emergency is a real trial.” --Wendell Berry </p>
<p>What I hunger for, and what I believe the world hungers for these days, is a generous portion of love served up with a spicy side dish of anger. </p>
<p>Seldom do we hear the ideal of a fiery love, a love powered and fueled by rage at injustice, unnecessary suffering, and the destruction of life. We are aware of the ideal of love as patient and kind, and that’s an important characterization of love when we hold the reins of power. But with regard to the environmental crisis, this is a truncated and dangerous understanding of the power of love. Love, when rooted in the unyielding ground of reality, is nothing less than the most potent force for change and renewal in our world.</p>
<p>Now to clarify a bit about anger, a potent energy in its own right. To borrow an image from Sojourner Truth, anger is both the realization that the world is upside down and the power to turn it right side up again. </p>
<p>We’re an angry people, and rightfully so. As an angry people, though, we want to see massive change “now.” We are a people with apocalyptic leanings; we favor a “big bang” approach to creating a new world over the long, slow work of cleaning up after ourselves. We don’t much enjoy the organic process of change, getting our hands dirty, sweating with time and effort, working to create fertile ground in the midst of the wasteland. </p>
<p>We have a habit of overlooking the power of accumulated, small actions to create harmony or disease in persons, landscapes, or societies. We tell our histories through the lens of large events, and as a consequence, lack stories of revolution rooted in the soil of untold numbers of actions taken by ordinary people in the course of daily life. Given that the challenges we face were built slowly over the course of decades, the big bang paradigm through which we tell our story, and seek to shape history, isn’t a particularly truthful or adaptive approach to righting our upside down world.</p>
<p>We are also a nation of “patients,” increasingly sick and broken in body, mind, and spirit. To heal means to become whole. Our anger, misunderstood and un-mastered, has torn us and our planet asunder. We have forgotten the art of being patient, the importance of bending low to listen and learn from uncomfortable people, facts, and feelings in order to become whole again. </p>
<p>Instead of being patient with anger, we treat our anger with anger. We stuff our anger, throw it away as if it were trash, or throw it around as if those around us were trash. Our stuffed and discarded anger chokes the air and pollutes the water, raises our blood pressure, overwhelms the vulnerable among us, crushes us with depression, warms the earth. </p>
<p>We fill landfills with our unwanted anger, when in fact anger is a gift, a resource, something to be treasured. Anger is not something to be pushed down or thrown “away” — there is no “away.” We are all connected. Anger goes somewhere when you cannot, or will not, hold it and transmute it into right action. Much of the anger that we feel, in fact, rises up through us from mother Earth: her anger seeks to awaken us, to compel us — her very limbs — to blaze new paths of beauty and justice with a fiery love. </p>
<p>We feel anger, but anger as we express it in our society is an ungrounded anger. We are like trees cut off at the roots. The anger we throw away and around is medicine for the disease that ails us all: our alienation and disconnection from nature and our native selves. Our medicine, anger, is calling us back to our roots, calling us back to our bodies, calling us back to the earth. </p>
<p>Take some time every day to concentrate on the quality of your connection with the earth as you sit, stand, or walk. This is the seat of a fiery love, a love that can sustain us in our efforts to remain patient creators of a new world in the midst of an emergency. Until we are firmly rooted in the earth, until we are firmly rooted in our bodies, until we are firmly rooted in love, we remain loose cannons, sloppy lovers, and silent onlookers in the war against life in all of her forms. </p>
<p>Our job is to create new ground, fertile soil, for the coming world. We start by feeling, by listening, by rooting ourselves deeply in the sacred ground of our lives. We must become as walking trees, rooted in devotion and fierce connection to the earth, all the while moving through our daily lives with an embodied presence and a determined wakefulness. </p>
<p>Undisciplined, ungrounded anger likes to use the big bang to get attention, if not applause. Anger likes to see results now and to have its way. But disciplined anger, an anger rooted in love, is a potent mixture of seeming opposites. A fiery love, like that of a mama bear for her cubs, listens intently, channels ferocity, and fuels right action over time, regardless of chances for success.</p>
<p>As we connect to our ground in new ways, we must also learn how to share this sacred ground with others, standing together as we learn to speak new truths, dream new dreams, and support one another in our efforts to create a more beautiful and just world.</p>
<p>We need to attend to the ground beneath our feet. This is the path of the Sacred Feminine. Too long suppressed and silenced, it is time to tell a new story based in a very old story, a herstory. </p>
<p>I, for one, am tired of yielding the story of this world to the bigots, the power-hungry, and the zealots. I am also finished keeping my living interpretation of life to myself as the world starves. It is high time that history as we know it — the holocaust of nature, the rape of persons, the demonization of the “other” — ends. </p>
<p>Together, let us begin telling a new story. Let us stand, speak, and move from a place of grounded fiery love. This ground, your ground, is sacred ground. The whole world is your temple, our temple. Embrace your vocation as a protector, co-creator, and midwife of the Sacred Feminine in the world. </p>
<p>We need your righteous anger and your loving acts of resistance, resilience, and creativity. She needs you, too, your stubborn, unyielding efforts to turn the world right side up again. Join me in weaving this new story, our story, Herstory.</p>
<p>*****</p>
<p>P.S. It has been slowly dawning on me that my writing really must include the voices of women, all kinds of women. The old standards, like faith, hope, love, and God, are coming through me in a way that is quite different from what we've been taught. But it’s not just me. </p>
<p>Women in our times see things very differently from the outdated, male-dominated, Sky God worldview that dominates our spiritual discourse. Our voices are a vital, untapped resource in the work of righting our world.</p>
<p>My dream is to weave women’s voices, still largely unheard in public discourse, into the narrative of what I am writing. The question is how to do it. How to begin a Herstory Project? The answer, I hope, will include you and your friends.</p>
<p>I still don’t have the format figured out. If you have ideas, lay them on me. I could start a Herstory Project Facebook page with pictures, quotes, and questions for everyone to weigh in on. Or I could retool this blog (or create a new one) to have shorter, more frequent posts, posing questions for your response. The advantage of a blog is that it gives people the ability to comment anonymously (I want people to really lay it out there), the disadvantage is that blogs aren’t as accessible to the broader public as is Facebook. </p>
<p>Regardless of format, though, if you are crazy enough to help me to re-imagine the old standards in new ways, let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email at <a href="mailto:aalkin07@gmail.com">aalkin07@gmail.com</a>.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 16 Oct 2013 16:52:03 +0000Big Mama39 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/39#commentsFrom Small Seedshttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/38
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/flowering%20cherry%20tree%20public%20domain.jpg" width="249" height="173" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>It may be all the creation stories that I’ve been reading, but I am overtaken with the desire to start planting fruit trees this fall. Perhaps it's because tending vegetables in the garden is so time-consuming compared with caring for and harvesting fruit from trees. Perhaps it's because I’m wanting to put deeper roots down as we enter our third year of living in Eugene. Or perhaps loving fresh apples, cherries, plums, and pears is reason enough. With the coming of each spring, and each fall, an new project bubbles up from within me to try on this patch of earth we call home.</p>
<p>Last fall’s project began with a flock of baby chicks in our bathtub. I’m glad I limited our initial foray into chickens to fifteen. Keeping the girls and our rooster on pasture has been more difficult than I had foreseen, as the past summer burned up all the available grass. </p>
<p>With each new project that we embark on, be it our garden, our pastured chickens, or the strawberry orchard, the demands on our limited water supply grow. Living without a trace of rain for months this summer made me hesitant to use our precious water to irrigate the fields. If only water wells came with the equivalent of a gas gauge, so you could know whether you have water to spare — or not. But the only way to know your well is going dry is that your water starts to become thick and brown with mud. Then, of course, it’s too late. So you play it as safe as you can, choosing what to water and what not to water, hoping that you don’t end up taking baths with bottled water before the rains return again. </p>
<p>Without pasture, and with only chicken feed to eat (organic feed at that), our chickens grew more susceptible to illness. We lost our first chicken, Nieves, last month to intestinal parasites. She taught me a thing or two for the good of our flock, though, like adding apple cider vinegar to their water when we have no grass to help keep their intestinal pH optimal for killing parasites. </p>
<p>A friend of mine is growing fodder for her chickens, basically sprouting seeds or beans to feed as a source of protein and greens when the pastures are dry. Because I don’t want to work that hard to feed my chickens, I’m interested in looking into using gray water from our washing machine to irrigate the chicken pasture. The tiny little problem with this idea is that it will likely require that we venture into do-it-yourself plumbing. So fodder it may be. While I knew there would be some kinks to work out in the care and management of our chickens, I didn’t dream that water would be the primary limiting factor in growing pastured eggs in Oregon. </p>
<p>Now, however, the rains have returned with such intensity that we have set new records for September rainfall. The grass is springing up again, and I have planted cover crops where the chickens laid the earth bare this summer. With the return of the water, I face a new challenge: keeping my young strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry plants from being overwhelmed by a tsunami of grass. </p>
<p>Much as you can lose a car under deep snowfall in the Northeast, here in the Pacific Northwest you can lose hoses, garden tools, and even small plants to grass growth in a matter of weeks. But I’m not complaining -- I love it.</p>
<p>This is my discipline of joy -- playing outside in the elements, joining myself to the fresh air and soil, to the lives of chickens and bees -- though as with any discipline, it can be a challenge to keep going. There's a saying that you should meditate 30 minutes a day, or an hour if you are too busy to meditate. The same goes for maintaining a discipline of joy: spend thirty minutes a day doing the things you love to do, or mindfully doing the things you do for love, unless you're too busy and need a full hour to fill your well.</p>
<p>As far as our bees go, I'm not sure how well our remaining hive is doing after the loss of our first beehive last winter. I decided not to harvest any honey once again this fall, so as to allow the bees to keep their hard-earned stores for winter. Two weeks ago, when I was planning to get into the hive, the rains came, temperatures dropped, and it was no longer an opportune time to open it up and take look inside. Instead, I have been spending my time sitting at the hive entrance. There hasn’t been any traffic coming in or out, and I don’t have a good feeling about the prognosis for my remaining hive.</p>
<p>As I sat meditating on the silent hive earlier this week, though, I did have a bee buzz past my head en route to some other place. Bees manage to find me wherever I am, it seems. This summer, while picking blueberries at a local farm, a seven-year-old girl in my party came up to me to say: “You are a friend of the bees.” At first I thought she must know about our beekeeping, but when I asked her why she thought this, she said “Because I’ve been watching the bees come to visit you since we’ve been here.” The sweet nectar of these words has gone a long way in helping me hang in there with the elusive art of keeping bees in these challenging times.</p>
<p>My forty Gernika pepper plants, grown from seed hailing from the farm where my grandmother was born and raised in Spain, yielded over 10 gallons of peppers. The unseasonably warm, dry summer was perfect for growing peppers, if not chickens. These peppers are so mild and flavorful after they are sautéed in olive oil with a pinch of salt that my 8-year-old, Ian, has been known to eat twenty at a sitting. </p>
<p>Will raised the tomatoes for our family this year, and had much better success than I’ve had in years past. Now, Ian wants a portion of our family garden in which to raise “cube of butter” summer squash and any other crops he thinks are likely to succeed. </p>
<p>Initially, I had hoped to grow more of our own food in the garden than I am managing. The beauty of hitting the limits of what I can do with my available time and energy, however, is that each member of my family now has a chance to plant, nurture, and harvest food that they grew with their own hands. I may not be growing many vegetables, but this life of ours is yielding a family rooted in the seasons, the soil, and in the knowledge of how to nurture new life. </p>
<p>From Black Elk Speaks: "Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. ...And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy." </p>
<p>It is time to plant fruit trees, just as it is time to plant the vision of Black Elk in the soil of this world with each interaction that we have with others. From small seeds, great flowering trees grow.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 03 Oct 2013 21:14:33 +0000Big Mama38 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/38#commentsA Miraculous Life of Morehttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/37
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/sunrise500x.jpg" width="500" height="312" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>"We're in the business of creating a miracle here on earth." – Charles Eisenstein</p>
<p>What is it like to be in the midst of a miracle? The idea of a miracle sounds so warm and delicious, the kind of thing you would aspire to experience in a minute, right? Well, in fact, here on earth we are in the middle of miracle school, whether you remember enrolling or not. And, much like life itself (a miracle in its own right), it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. </p>
<p>It's very important to know the signs that one is participating in a miracle so you can see it through and not mess it up. Because miracles inspire panic, not awe, while they are in process. Keep this in mind so you can thwart your impulse to escape, hang in there with the fear and the pain, and keep moving forward with the plan instead. You see, contrary to popular belief, miracles require our participation to take root and grow.</p>
<p>I had the privilege of spending some time this past spring with a man who was on death row for 16 years in Georgia. Billy Moore not only lived to tell the tale, but is now walking about the world a free man. And he really is a free man — inside and out. Being that close to death by electric chair so many times helped form Billy in the crucible of fire, and it shows. Billy is a walking, talking miracle.</p>
<p>Being in the midst of a miracle story doesn't always feel good. Once, a tiny baby squirrel came up to me at a coffee shop, repeatedly standing on my shoe, asking for help, despite his innate fear of me. This little squirrel had to override his instincts after finding himself out of the safety of his nest. The baby squirrel reached out to a larger being — in this case, me — for help. Shaking, the baby allowed me to catch it, pick it up, and place it in a box. So far, so good. </p>
<p>When I put the lid on the box, though, this poor little squirrel panicked and began scratching fiendishly at the slick sides of the cardboard box, trying with all its might to escape. The darkness was terribly frightening to my little friend, and its distress was distressing to me. If only I could communicate with it, let it know that its trust in me had not been in vain. The darkness enveloping the squirrel was a sign of the fulfillment of my end of the bargain, not its betrayal. Remember that the darkness can be a sign of the benevolent action of love the next time you find yourself in the middle of a miracle and are tempted to despair, or worse yet, are tempted to escape.</p>
<p>Being in the midst of a modern-day miracle is a lot like the situation of the baby squirrel in the box: you are in the dark about what to do, your survival instincts are kicking in, you are stretched beyond your own ability to make things right, and you find yourself wholly dependent upon an unseen being far larger than yourself for help.</p>
<p>For my friend Billy on death row, the inner prompting that he got from the Big Unseen Being was to write letters of apology to the family members of the man he killed. Not easy letters to write. And why even bother? The lid was already placed firmly on the box: Billy was on death row. Even here, the mind’s survival strategy would be to deny wrongdoing, to present excuses, and certainly it would seek to hold the suffering of the victim’s family at a distance.</p>
<p>If you watch carefully, you will notice how we try to avoid taking responsibility for something as small as being late for an appointment, how easy it is to reflexively offer excuses about the weather, the kids, the traffic, or whatever, instead of simply saying, “I’m sorry I am late.” The mind takes the acknowledgement of mistakes, no matter how small, <em>very</em> personally. Acknowledging mistakes is indeed a threat to survival, but it’s a symbolic survival: the survival of our picture of ourselves. </p>
<p>We like to see ourselves as good people, as people who arrive on time, as people who say “please” and “thank you,” as people who don’t kill other people. It takes a tremendous love of truth to allow that airbrushed picture of ourselves to fall from its elevated position on the wall, and shatter. The irony, however, is that the wall and the elevated image of ourselves are what imprison us. The ground that shatters is the painful, but freeing, action of Love.</p>
<p>Lid on box, Billy thwarted the universal survival instinct, and wrote those letters. He wrote those letters even though he knew there was nothing he could say that had the power to bring their loved one back. Fruitless as it seemed, Billy took full responsibility for his actions to the family, as he had done in the court proceedings. In the letters, Billy acknowledged how small his gesture was. Billy asked for help from a Big Unseen Being, received an answer, acted on it, and continued to wait in the dark, lid firmly on the box.</p>
<p>From our limited human perspective, the small squirrel’s perspective, it's hopeless. Here we are, flying through the air with the lid on, in a cold unfeeling box, going God knows where, but we're pretty sure it's to our death. If only we had remained in the nest. If only we haven't ventured to the edge and peered over. If only we hadn't reached for more. In Billy’s case, a legitimate need for more money, taken by illegitimate means, turned into an unplanned murder. Billy fell out of the nest of safety, in the search for more, and did he ever get it: a miraculous life of more.</p>
<p>Being in the midst of a miracle can feel like hell — not heaven. It goes against your every instinct for self-preservation. You look over the edge of the nest, you fall out, because you're called to a fuller participation in life. You wanted more, and rightly so. But once you're in that box, being transported from your old life to a new life by a being far larger than yourself, you start to panic. You start crawl up the sides of your box. You wish you never asked for more. </p>
<p>You contemplate breaking out of the plan you made for yourself and for a better life. You consider going back to the mindless job you hate, returning to that lover who pays the bills and steps on your heart, taking that drink or pill instead of continuing to make amends and stay sober. Miracles are terrifying. By their very nature, miracles are solutions to a problem that you and the world cannot provide. </p>
<p>And miracles, like love itself, can never be forced upon us. Miracles require our participation to germinate and grow. No matter what our situation, we have a choice. Continue to open to the heart-rending action of love? Or shut down, harden, and ossify. Why do you think so many people walk around virtually dead in this world? Because reaching for life is scary. You have to be out of your mind to do it, and I mean that literally.</p>
<p>Those letters written by Billy were received by the family of the murdered man, and they sparked a correspondence. Initially, they wrote about forgiveness. The family forgave Billy, in part out of the Christian faith instilled in them by the man whose life was taken, and in part out of enlightened self-interest: they no longer wanted to suffer, or to live in pain. </p>
<p>They continued writing for the full 16 years Billy was on death row. And in that time, through the love of the grieving family, Billy came to forgive himself. He learned to open to the painful, freeing action of love. No small miracle that, opening one's heart to love for the unloveable stranger in our midst: ourselves. If only all of us on death row could allow the seeds of love to be planted in our hearts, then we, too, might come to know the paradise of being seen and loved fully in our perfect imperfection.</p>
<p>The inner, unseen miracle, the miracle of new life, had taken root, sprouted, and grew in Billy and in this family, over the years through these letters. Hidden from the light of the world, within the darkness of this tightly closed box, a miracle unfolded.</p>
<p>It was largely because of this family's testimony that Billy's death sentence was commuted to life in prison, and later his commutation turned into release. In their plea for Billy’s life, the members of this family said in essence: "We have already lost one family member, do not take another away from us. Billy is now a member of our family.” </p>
<p>The inner miracle burst forth into the public sphere. The parole board in Georgia even received a call from Mother Theresa with a plea for his life. After 14 death dates, and 16 years on death row, facing death by electrocution in an electric chair, Billy's miracle was complete: the lid to the box was opened, and he was released from prison. As Billy’s wife, Donna says, Billy is a walking talking miracle just like the rest of us. It's just more obvious in Billy's case.</p>
<p>What kind of miracle are you in the midst of now, at this very moment in your life? No matter what kind of miracle, the aim of a miracle is new life. Not a continuation of your prior life, but a radically changed, altered life. A more expansive life, a life that was impossible to reach from the roots of the old life before. That’s why the death, the darkness, the disruption, the pain. A miracle is the action of a new seed being planted in the soil of your current life. Much has to be cut, removed, and cleared away, to make way for this new life, this miraculous life of more.</p>
<p>Remember that miracles don't feel good in the making. We tend to only recognize a miracle in retrospect, not in the going through. You may now be experiencing the gravest problems of your life, and yet, your own miracle story may well be unfolding. Feel however you need to feel. Panic, even, if that helps. Just don't jump out of the box because you find the darkness too frightening. </p>
<p>Remember the darkness and the despair experienced by that small squirrel while it was being carried to safety. Seeds can only germinate when planted into dark earth. It's your job to nurture those seeds of new life, no matter how hopeless it seems. St. John of the Cross, the mystic, once wrote: “The brightest light in God is complete darkness to the intellect.” The darkness, believe it or not, can be a sign of progress and cause for hope.</p>
<p>The lessons of our small lives are but a preparation for our common life on this earth. The problems facing us, and their solutions, are bigger than we are individually, and in many ways, bigger than we are collectively. We are in training to become nothing less than miracle workers in the world.</p>
<p>We sense the oncoming darkness as the lid comes down. It's scary and it's dark, but what we've got now on the planet — this isn't living. We are leaning over the edge the nest because surely there is something more to life than this. </p>
<p>Miracles are possible even on death row. Murder can turn into a way of deepening the bonds of love within and among people. It is time for a change. It's time we all got carried away and started cultivating new ways living in the world. </p>
<p> It’s coming: we <em>are</em> going to fall out of the nest of safety. Good. We deserve a new life, an fully alive life, a miraculous life of more.</p>
</div></div></div>Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:35:35 +0000Big Mama37 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/37#commentsIt's Timehttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/36
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/Bee%20Rally01%282%29.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="" /></div></div></div>Tue, 23 Jul 2013 04:56:42 +0000Big Mama36 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/36#commentsStrange Beautyhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/35
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/photo%286%29_0.jpg" width="500" height="350" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Today marks the summer solstice. The light will reign for 16 hours and 36 minutes in Eugene on this, the longest of days. In this busy, bright, ripening season on the farm, I have only fragments of reflection to offer. May you catch glimpses of the strange beauty in your midst as you go about life on this solstice day.</p>
<p><strong>Summer Reading</strong></p>
<p>"Ludwig Wittgenstein said, 'All I know is what I have words for.' The absence of words is the absence of intimacy; these experiences are starved for language." —from page 5 of my summer reading selection, <em>Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity</em>, by Andrew Solomon.</p>
<p><strong>Birds</strong></p>
<p>Drinking coffee outside in the mornings is a favorite summer ritual. While sitting in our big wooden rocking chairs under a white oak tree near the garden, Will and I realized that a chickadee family moved into the lime green birdhouse that Ian built last year.</p>
<p>This morning Ian awoke, hair standing on end, thinking first of going outside to see the chickadees. He was in luck: within minutes a chickadee flew into the small hole that serves as its front door, food clasped in its beak.</p>
<p><strong>Bees</strong></p>
<p>At last I opened up the dead hive to find a not-so-large population of dead honeybees, many with their heads still in the comb, seeking honey.
</p>
<p>Low-interventionist beekeeper that I am, we did not attempt to harvest any honey in the fall, and hoped that the bees had put away ample stores for the winter. One hive did.
</p>
<p>This hive starved to death. And I, holding the record of their demise before me, witnessed their last moments, frozen in time.
</p>
<p><strong>Sirius</strong></p>
<p>I am just wild about our year-old, ungainly 100 pound dog, Sirius. He is rough playful furry love embodied.</p>
<p>My spiritual "work" of late consists of being less serious. Can I ever be deeply, deadly serious, choking the flow of Life which seeks to move through me freely — riotously, even — to nothing more than a trickle.</p>
<p>"Come here, Sirius!" "Don't eat that, Sirius!" "Sit down, Sirius!" </p>
<p>Perhaps one day, my misbehaving guru of playfulness will have me trained.</p>
<p><strong>Boy</strong></p>
<p>Last Friday, Ian completed second grade. He is still so young, holding my hand in parking lots, asking me to read to him, sharing his wild ideas for new games. He picks our strawberries much in the same way he readies himself for bed, treating it as a race, a contest, a chance to beat Mommie at her own game.</p>
<p>But he won't let me kiss him in front of his friends any more, insists on carrying heavy bags of groceries into the house, helps steady his grandma on walks, and can get Sirius to mind when no one else can.</p>
<p>Despite eating a seasonal diet of only cherries, strawberries, melon, ice cream, and macaroni and cheese, he is growing like a weed. The time is passing so quickly; I can measure the months by the height markings on his bedroom wall.</p>
<p><strong>Peppers</strong></p>
<p>Will and I just finished planting about 40 Gernika pepper starts in our garden, after planting about 50 in my mom's garden and greenhouse.
</p>
<p>I grew these starts from seed my folks smuggled over from Spain two years ago, many of which descended from pepper plants grown on the farm where my Grandmother Aldave was born and raised. The rest of the seeds came from a drugstore in Gernkia.</p>
<p>My grandmother never cared much for farming or gardening. Ever the pragmatist, she preferred to only deal with peppers once they were ready to cook for eating.</p>
<p>Where I feel so much love and continuity in the simple act of growing these Gernika pepper plants in the soil of my home in Oregon, tempting me to adopt a weighty sacramental reverence for each pepper, my Abuelita would say, sensibly: "Don't eat them all. You are a farmer now. Go sell them for a good price at the marketa."</p>
<p><strong>Birds</strong></p>
<p>Red-tailed hawks are present in our valley in what seem to be record numbers, though I don't really know that. We have only lived here for two years this June.
</p>
<p>Yesterday, out on a walk with Sirius near sunset, I watched a small yellow bird chase and harass one of these regal hawks, some twenty times the larger. The little bird was fearless, if not frantic, in seeking to disrupt the hawk's errand. </p>
<p>The hawk alighted on a fir tree in the forest above our house, and the small bird flew away quietly, successful it seems, at protecting its young.
</p>
<p><strong>Weeds</strong></p>
<p>It's the odd, unclaimed spaces on farms that are host to an abundance of plant and insect diversity. We have no idea how important these wild spaces might be in fostering the life of the land, or of the crops that we so carefully plant in rows and weed until harvest.</p>
<p>In the uncultivated part of our new berry orchard there is an unbidden rash of chamomile flowers. It is said that weeds show up where they soil has been disrupted, and also where they are needed.</p>
<p>Around here, wild mint grows in the winter creek beds. They contain oils that help to soften the hard clay soils. Dandelions, with deep taproots that bring nutrients to the surface of the soil when their leaves fall off, abound here as almost everywhere.
</p>
<p>But the chamomile plants are my favorite "wild" crop, providing superb forage for our bees, and an abundance of flower heads that when dried, provide a potent medicinal tea. It's as if the land is saying to me, "Harvest the summer light to drink in when it's dark, damp, and cold outside this winter. And why don't you make some tea for those bees while you're at it?"</p>
<p>What wild spaces can you and I leave in our lives, as well as in our yards? Rows are fine, but the weedy mess is where our souls and our soils are nourished by the untamed wisdom ways of Life.
</p>
<p><strong>On Beauty</strong></p>
<p>"Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself." -- Deena Metzger, <em> Entering the Ghost River<em></em></em></p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 21 Jun 2013 06:20:52 +0000Big Mama35 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/35#commentsAsking and Waitinghttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/34
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/small_logo300x.jpg" width="300" height="300" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>I've been thinking a lot about how to affect systemic change in the face of the vast, overwhelming environmental crises facing us as a species, like that of global climate change. And my ongoing meditation about climate change, interestingly, has been shaped by my health challenges. You see, I recently discovered that I have an autoimmune disease, Sjogren’s Syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the moisture-producing glands of the body, particularly the mouth and eyes.</p>
<p>Because traditional medicine can’t do much to disrupt the disease process of Sjogren’s, I started seeing a Chinese medicine herbalist in April. Only two weeks into drinking an unpalatable tea twice a day, I no longer felt like I was climbing up a steep mountain in the hot sun after a night of binge drinking. My fatigue has abated, and with that, clothes have begun to be folded, strawberries planted, floors swept and mopped, and I feel like a gentler, kinder woman — some of the time at least. The effect of this herbal tea on my health has been nothing short of miraculous.</p>
<p>After a couple of weeks of dutifully drinking my mystery miracle potion, I asked my herbalist some questions. I learned that Chinese medicine considers Sjogren’s Syndrome, a disease characterized primarily by dryness, as a “toxic yang” condition. The metaphor he used is that my body is like a burning building, and as a consequence, the normal energetic pathways (on which health depends) are blocked. This makes for some pretty crazy, seemingly unrelated, physical symptoms, in my case ranging from having numb or tingling fingers, dental issues beyond belief, to feeling ice cold even in the unrelenting heat of the Texas summertime. </p>
<p>So check this out: an autoimmune condition characterized by intractable dryness and heat, resulting in seemingly disconnected and contradictory symptoms, like the sensation of cold. If this isn’t an apt metaphor for global warming, I don’t know what is. Only we are the cells who are unwittingly attacking our shared body, planet earth, by spraying pesticides, draining aquifers, clear-cutting forests, and boosting CO2 levels in the atmosphere with our penchant for burning fossil fuels. Our earth is now the burning building, many natural pathways to balance blocked, causing increased temperatures and drought conditions worldwide, except for increasingly common instances of extreme weather — savage cold, rain or wind — worldwide.</p>
<p>Yang is the outward-looking, warming, initiating, doing principle, often associated with the sun, maleness, and the mind. The yin pole, in contrast, is the inward, cooling, responsive, meditative, being principle, often associated with the moon, femaleness, and the belly. We all have both energies available to us, of course, but as humans and often as whole cultures, we tend to live habitually out of one energy center or the other. I’d characterize our culture as a toxic yang culture, and whether we wish to participate in the disease process of global warming or not, we can’t help but pour fuel on the fire by going about our daily lives, not unlike a confused immune system that attacks itself as a natural outgrowth of profound imbalance. </p>
<p>Here’s where the irony, and the hope, steps in: the secret ingredient in the herbal tea that is working wonders in me, helping rivers to run again in the desert of my body, is a powdered form of a snake, found in the South of China in the summertime. The paradise of good health — my Eden, if you will — is being restored by a snake!</p>
<p>Predictably, I began encountering snakes everywhere at home once I began drinking my Chinese tea. And so I have been thinking a lot about snakes, about their ability to shed their ill-fitting skins and start anew, symbolizing new life and regeneration. And I’ve been thinking of how the snake was a common symbol of the Goddess in ancient days, only later to be depicted as the “Evil One” as yang religions gained ascendancy with their hierarchical structures of leadership, their orientation to a male Sky God over a female Earth Goddess, and a marked preference for the head over the belly as the primary source of wisdom. </p>
<p>I have also been meditating on the snake as potent teacher and spiritual medicine, pointing us to alternative approaches to healing the crisis of our collective body, planet earth. Snake medicine for toxic yang — toxic doing, toxic consuming, and toxic warring with what is — suggests that we learn how to bring our energy low, slow, and on equal ground with all others. Snake medicine reminds us how to journey forward, but with serpentine movement. And perhaps most important, snake energy reminds us to attend to the wisdom of the belly in seeking new ways of being and acting on behalf of our shared body, planet earth and all her beings. </p>
<p>There’s a story I know that speaks to honoring the intuitive process, yin wisdom, or snake medicine in dreaming up meaningful responses to the world. One afternoon, about a decade ago in Austin, Texas, I visited the Mary House Catholic Worker to attend a “hen party,” for women only. At this hen party, I met a remarkable woman, Joanie, who told me the story of how she came to find her path of social service in the world. </p>
<p>Joanie, married and living a materially-comfortable life, found herself with time on her hands and the determination to do something of good for the world. But what, she had no idea. Every morning, this woman went to church. In prayer on her knees, she asked to be told, shown, or nudged in the direction of what she was to do. </p>
<p>Low and slow, adopting a posture of a heartfelt and humble search for answers, this woman resisted the cultural imperative to just do it. Instead, she asked and waited, asked and waited. In fact, she asked and waited for her answer for quite some time. Perhaps more unusual yet, however, was the fact that Joanie, embedded as she was in a patriarchal religious tradition and society, trusted that she had a particular purpose and gift to give the planet.</p>
<p>In our culture, with our emphasis on the head as the primary gateway to wisdom, it is common to look to professionals with impressive credentials, to the halls of "higher" education, or to the heads of organizations to give us guidance when we’re at a crossroads in life and seeking answers. Joanie, however, made a very different choice. Belly down in the dust, where no one is higher or lower than anyone else, humble but also equally endowed in worth, talent, and purpose, yin energy connects us to the promise we each hold in healing our world. Grounded in the value of her unique soul, Joanie inquired within to discover what her contribution might be. She inquired within and waited.</p>
<p>Then one day she received an answer: peanut butter. I kid you not: peanut butter. On a gut level, she had received an answer, a “knowingness” if you will, which is made of more solid stuff than anything manufactured by the mind. You can wait quite a while for the gift of knowingness, but often the answer you receive — peanut butter — can seem the tiniest bit crazy and off the mark, especially to our linear minds. It’s hard to know what to think, and that’s the point: now we’re in the realm of authentic, unique, and homegrown inspiration, of which we need a great deal more. Joanie stopped by the grocery store on her way home and, lo and behold, there was a prominent display of peanut butter — on sale. It must have been a quite the sale, peanut butter so cheap and plentiful as to not be passed by, because Joanie stocked up on several cases, all the while wondering how she would explain this to her husband when she returned home.</p>
<p>The path of the snake, while forward-moving, does not travel in straight lines, but weaves first in one direction and then the other. With all these jars of peanut butter taking up the available pantry, floor, and counter space in her kitchen, and no earthly idea what it was all for, you can imagine Joanie wondering if she had completely lost her mind. Thankfully, one morning a few days later, the phone rang. A friend was calling, brimming with excitement about an article she had just read in the Austin American Statesman about the “egg lady.” The egg lady, Lynn Goodman-Strauss, who to this day runs the Mary House Catholic Worker, brought hard boiled eggs and tortillas to feed the day laborers who stood waiting on the downtown streets in the early morning hours, hoping that they would chosen for a job that day. These workers were often so poor that they came out to find work without first eating.</p>
<p>Joanie, kitchen full of peanut butter, reasoned to herself that if these men needed eggs for breakfast, they would probably like a peanut butter sandwich to take with them, too. So began Joanie’s peanut butter sandwich ministry, which she operated out of the trunk of her car to complement the efforts of the egg lady. The work of the peanut butter and egg ladies lasted for many years, until a larger organization, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, was organized to feed the hungry with food trucks throughout Austin. From the seed efforts of a small number of deeply committed individuals, like Joanie and Lynn, a new effort took root and spread, enlisting the help of a great many more volunteers with the ability to feed thousands of hungry people daily on the streets of Austin.</p>
<p>Now you may be allergic to Christianity, mention of prayer, peanut butter, or the thought of a higher power. That’s fine by me. You can still practice snake medicine, or yin wisdom, in your own life with none of the aforementioned trappings. But perhaps you’re simply not sure how feeding the hungry amounts to action on behalf of a planet on fire with a toxic yang imbalance. Me either, exactly. But I’d say that whatever your authentic answer is to the question that the world poses to you, if you engage in the yin spiritual practice of slow, low, gut-centered action, then that action holds promise for addressing some part of the disease process from which our planet suffers -- headstrong yang doing, consuming, and warring with all that is.</p>
<p>What we all need are more free peanut butter sandwiches and belly laughs to soften the desert of meaning, and drought of joy, that afflict us. That’s all I’ve got: I don’t yet have my unique answer for how to disrupt the disease process of global warming, though as a mother and as a human being, I have a lot riding on this one. In the meantime, I will join in the effort where it feels fitting, marching here, contacting my Senator there, keeping bees as best as I am able.</p>
<p>But the real work, the radical, to-the-roots effort of my being, I carry within me quietly, unseen and unheralded by the world. I carry the question that this beautiful, suffering world presents to me, embracing it as fully as I can: head, heart, and belly. As I meander through the days, I am silently, persistently, asking and waiting, asking and waiting.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 22 May 2013 15:09:50 +0000Big Mama34 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/34#commentsTea for the Beeshttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/33
<div class="field field-name-field-photo field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://lunasolfarm.com/sites/default/files/bee_2.jpg" width="500" height="280" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Last year, I took my seven-year-old son, Ian, to see a documentary about bees called <a href="http://www.queenofthesun.com/" target="_blank">Queen of the Sun</a>. The movie cataloged the various problems facing honey bees in our world, and likely moved on to tell inspiring stories of folks working to solve the crisis, but I wouldn't know. I didn't get to see the end of it.</p>
<p>About halfway through the movie, Ian turned to me with tears streaming down his cheeks saying, “I want to go. I can't take any more.” For a moment, I almost tried to talk him into staying, but looking at him I realized I had made a mistake. In going to see this documentary, I had broken my own rule about avoiding talk of environmental issues, or disturbing world events, unless Ian had need of the information for his immediate life. </p>
<p>“You really screwed up”, he said to me angrily as we left the pizza place that was showing the documentary. And in the car: “Why do I need to know all of that? What good is it?” </p>
<p>“What good is it?” I began to ask of myself about the articles I was reading, and the news stories I listened to on the radio in the weeks that followed. Is this helping? Does this empower me to respond? There's a fine line between being aware of what's going on in the world on the one hand, and traumatizing oneself into inaction on the other. All too often, we unwittingly consume media that feeds the growth of fear, despair, and even denial in us, instead of fostering a response of intelligent and practical action.</p>
<p>Ian and I came home that afternoon from the movie, and we went out back to sit and watch our beehives. Sitting in the cool grass under a blue sky, we watched the bees coming in with bright yellow pollen in what we call their “saddlebags.” Here we sat for about thirty minutes, grounding ourselves in the present moment, and reconnecting to the beauty of the world, surrounded by the lively dance of the bees. As we sat, the shock and jaggedness of the movie and of our fight gave way to feelings of inner warmth and ease. </p>
<p>My approach to large environmental problems, as well as social tragedies like the bombing at the Boston Marathon, is to do something. Something, no matter how small. There can be mindless, compulsive doing, of course, but in our society, we are more likely to get hooked into a cycle of heady non-doing: compulsive reading, worrying, talking, and arguing with one another on Facebook. None of this makes us feel better, because we are wired to respond to crisis, to take action. Our heady response to the world locks us up in our skulls and cuts us off from the healing elements of the world around us. </p>
<p>But even our efforts to defy despair with thoughtful action can meet with failure. A few weeks ago, I discovered that one of our two beehives was dead, likely due to Colony Collapse Disorder. This was the hive where Ian and I sat to restore ourselves. It was at this hive last May that we cheered with the discovery that pollen was going into the hive on the back legs of the worker bees. The virgin queen had successfully mated in midair during her mating flight up to the sun, chased and caught by the strongest of the male bees. That pollen was going into the hive indicated that there was brood to be fed, and a fertile queen to lay eggs. These were my gentle bees, my Italian bees, as I liked to call them. Golden and mellow, prone to taking naps in the afternoon, far less aggressive than the bigger, stronger hive that made it through the winter successfully.</p>
<p>It's not rational, but I still haven't been able to open the hive up to perform the postmortem, to clear the boxes in hopes that new occupants might move in. I’ve been frozen in place where the bees are concerned, unable to write about them in my blog, waiting for some sort of resolution. It's as if I've been assessing whether this path — growing food, keeping bees and chickens, trying to live more lightly on the earth — will bolster my sanity, or erode it. I chose this path because I love the natural world, more deeply than words can express, and am nourished daily by participating in nature’s liturgy through the rituals of growing, tending, harvesting, and learning. </p>
<p>Instead of acting, I retreated from the grief I felt over the loss of this hive, and the plight of the honey bee in general, by reading. And have I ever been reading: about the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?emc=eta1&amp;_r=1&amp;" target="_blank">record-breaking losses </a>of honey bees this year, about how there weren't enough bees to pollinate the almond crops in California for the first time this Spring, about how the increasing use of EPA-approved <a href="http://oregonsustainablebeekeepers.org/2013/03/27/im-getting-rid-of-imidacloprid-avoiding-the-worst-neonicotinoid-insecticides/" target="_blank">insecticides</a> on farms and in residential areas has created a lethal soup which is poisoning both bees and birds in record numbers. I’ve signed petitions, gently suggested my Facebook friends do the same, and read still more, looking for a solution. But until this week, no movement, no words, and no writing from me.</p>
<p>Then Boston happened. And I remembered something. We are powerful. We are powerful beyond all reckoning. The problem is that we keep forgetting. We keep forgetting and we are accustomed to using our indomitable strength from a place of fear, instead of love. </p>
<p>“Where there is no love, put love, and there you will find love.” These words of the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, point to the proper role of human beings on this earth, always, but especially when we are tempted to despair. We are here to serve life. And life is served through the actions of love in the world.</p>
<p>Intellectual understanding is far less important in facing the challenges of our time, and our planet, than the willingness to serve life through the tangible actions of love, whatever they might be. And these actions of love will rightly be different for each of us. Under-standing flows from action: you must stand under the Mystery, allow the darkness of unknowing to envelop you, and live your way into the answers in your daily life. </p>
<p>We start with a small action and plant it in the barren soil of a despairing world. There is no one to save us, but us. That’s the whole point of existence. We are the help, the sanity, and the goodness, we’ve been waiting for. Scary, I know, but true. Let our cry for understanding not be “Why?” but instead, “What?” What can I do? What would help? And do it. Let that be your prayer and your meditation: asking “what?” and then answering with nothing less than your life. </p>
<p>The fire of indignation over recent events in Boston melted the icy retreat of fear and sadness inside me. My questioning as to “what” I am to do about the bees in my own backyard has led me to an improbable but delightful answer: brewing a homeopathic tea to feed and strengthen the bees. </p>
<p>Spikenard Farm Honeybee Sanctuary, featured in the very documentary, Queen of the Sun, that I left early last year, developed a healing <a href="http://www.spikenardfarm.org/articles.html" target="_blank">bee tea recipe</a>. They credit it, in part, to honey bee losses of only 5-10% over the past decade, a real achievement when compared to average bee losses of 33% nationwide over the same time frame.</p>
<p>Making tea for the bees. What other crazy, wonderful things will we do for love? "Where there is no love, put love, and there you will find love." </p>
<p>The world we've been waiting for is waiting for us.</p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:26:21 +0000Big Mama33 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/33#commentsOur Sacred "No"http://lunasolfarm.com/node/32
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>This morning as I was pouring maple syrup on my waffles, I thought of a Facebook friend of mine in Iowa who not only has beehives, but maple trees which she taps for syrup. Her next-door neighbor recently leveled all of his remaining maple trees in order to plant more rows of corn on his farm. The price of corn is at an all-time high, due to last-year’s drought and due to increased demand, in part for ethanol production. A cruel irony abounds as many small farmers, not just huge corporate agribusinesses, convert all their remaining land to crops of corn.</p>
<p>It's interesting that this farmer cut down many trees that he could have tapped for another crop to sell: maple syrup. There were doubtless other things he could have done to increase the profit from his farm, besides cutting all the remaining trees from his land. Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that by clearing away the last stands of trees on his property, this farmer unwittingly committed an act of violence against himself, by his own hand. </p>
<p>There really seems to be no end in sight to the raping and pillaging of our lands to yield commodities, no end to this desperate mining of every resource we have in order to convert something else, something more, into money. </p>
<p>We keep bees, and I'm holding the number of hives we keep at two, as any more than that could create an imbalance on our land and outstrip the ability of the bees to find good forage in our area. </p>
<p>In ancient times, honey was considered sacred, and therefore, never sold. Because honey was too sacred to sell, it was gifted instead, as are all things that we receive in life that are truly valuable: the gift of life itself, love, friendship, laughter, breath, sunshine, rain, and soil, to name but a few.</p>
<p>It's hard to make a living in this society. More often than not, we have to make a killing: choose between money or life. We are asked to do deadening things to make our money, we are asked to wreak violence on the land of ourselves, our families and our lands, in order to eke out what we call a “living.” Can we indeed fashion a life from so much death, violence, and destruction? Can we ever be whole as a people if we have to chop down all of our own trees in order to make a living? Is the price ever too high?</p>
<p>At every turn in this process of starting our small farm, I am presented with a choice between doing a whole lot of something in order to make money, or doing less of many things, in order to mimic nature and nurture more variety, balance, and beauty on our land. It's not easy to choose the latter. Even our tax code favors making a killing on the land, pressing more bees, more chickens, more of the same kind of berry into our small acreage, that we might have a crop or two to sell for profit, and even then, it’s a pittance. </p>
<p>A well-rounded variety, a healthful approach to the land, isn’t what is encouraged by our tax code: profit is. Because profit is what generates revenue, not clean water and air, friable soil, wooded areas, or pollinators. And yet, these are precisely the things that we must nurture and encourage if we are to heal our planet and our bodies, much less survive as a species. </p>
<p>Knowing the pressures that we all face to make money, cutting down all the maple trees to grow more corn looks still looks like a failure of imagination to me. But whose failure of imagination isn’t entirely clear. The axe-happy farmer is only a symptom of a larger dis-ease, one that has knocked a good many, if not all of us, out of balance.</p>
<p>Perhaps we would all think more imaginatively if we didn't feel that our backs were up against a wall. It's hard to enter the process of trial-and-error so crucial to creative imagination when you feel your survival is at stake. How do we prepare the soil, or create the conditions in which the seeds of the imagination can be planted and have time to bear fruit? This is a question of a whole people, not just of a single family in Iowa.</p>
<p>When that man was tearing up his land, he was also tearing himself apart, all in order to make a living. Perhaps the first answer, the first step towards change, isn't imagination, but having the courage to say “no.” No, this costs too much. No, there must be a better way. Until we say no, we will continue tearing our lands, and our bodies, and our spirits asunder. </p>
<p>Perhaps instead, summoning our sacred power to say “No. This is not for sale,” as with honey in ancient days, we can move past our fearful reflex of violence, start imagining new ways of making a living, and begin to plant new stands of life-giving lives, together.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:53:28 +0000Big Mama32 at http://lunasolfarm.comhttp://lunasolfarm.com/node/32#comments